Hard cold Canadian butter

Posted on February 26, 2021 by Christophe Pelletier

Perhaps you saw it in the news. There has been a lot of excitement about butter in Canada in the past few days. It made the news headlines about all around the world. The butter in Canada seems to have become harder, and harder to spread over the past year or so. The blame seems to be about the use of palm oil in cow feed. This is interesting because it brings up some matters that I had addressed in my article on fats, earlier on in this blog (in particular read the sections about margarine vs. butter and how the fatty acids profile affects the physical quality of the product). Here are a couple of links about the “buttergate” in which you can find more details.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-56175784

https://www.ctvnews.ca/business/dairy-farmers-lobby-asks-members-to-stop-using-palm-as-it-investigates-buttergate-1.5323703

Butter or frozen cottage cheese?

The funny thing is that I found butter to be a lot less enjoyable the first day I tried some almost when I moved in Canada 22 years ago. I do not think it was just me because right at the beginning of my stay here, I had been asked by a Canadian what I thought of the butter. He was asking me that because he had noticed that quite a few people he knew who had moved to Canada were complaining about the butter. I remember just answering something along the lines of “meh, not the best ever” and I had not paid too much attention to it after that. Yet, one of my neighbours in Vancouver had once started her own ranting about Canadian butter but she blamed the poor quality to the fact that, according to her, Canadian butter is frozen. I have never really tried to find out if it is always the case. Then, after I met the Canadian lady who is now my wife, I took her for trips to Europe about every year. Not only did she find all foods to taste much better there, she really developed an issue with Canadian butter in particular. And the issue has been –and still is- that the bloody thing is much stiffer at room temperature in Canada than the butter in my family in France even straight out of the fridge. One thing I know for sure is that in Canada there is 80% fat in butter, while in Europe it must be minimum 82%. Other thing I had noticed is how the Canadian salted butter is much more salty than in Europe. Anyway, I only buy unsalted butter. She has been adamant to go live in France since then. Food is one important reason for this move, and we are indeed making plans. The current Covid-19 pandemic has delayed this somehow but it is going to happen.

Personally, I have never been a fan of dairy in Canada. I find the butter, as mentioned, stiff and unpleasant to spread on bread. It also tends to break in a rough chunk instead of allowing me to cut all the way through when I cut a block out of the pound of butter to put on my butter dish, which makes the butter look like some frozen cottage cheese, which I always found weird and unappealing. I found Canadian cheeses tasteless and buttery. Ironic to see butter look like cheese and cheese loo like butter. Save me from blocks of cheddar or the likes of it. Actually, those would qualify more as butter to me than the butter. I cannot say anything good about Canadian attempts to make Brie or Camembert. Those have the softness and the appeal of hockey pucks. Not for me. Of course, I can find some imports, but the Canadian dairy sector has managed to get protection from the government and foreign cheese has import duties that make even the dullest Brie of Gouda about as expensive as precious metals. I seriously object paying 2 to 3 times what I consider the normal price of cheese. Along with dull quality, it is the same problem with bread, which is why I make my own, and the same why I make my own deli and grow my vegetables. So, since I am in Canada, I do not eat much cheese anymore. Milk is not any more attractive, either. I always found it somehow soapy and with a weird mouth feeling, not to mention that I really do not need to have extra vitamins in it, and even less so when it is added as a palmitate compound, which is… guess what… related to palm oil. So here it goes again. At least, something is consistent here. Perhaps, they want to feed us as much as palmitic acid as they can because palmitic acid is such a great saturated fatty acid that has this great characteristic that it tend to increase the level of LDL, so so-called bad cholesterol. Thank you Canadian dairy industry and Canadian government for the special care you give us. Ok that was sarcasm.

So, to sum up what is in my previous blog articles and in the two links I gave at the beginning of this article, palm oil is in cattle feed. It seems that the countries where this happens are Canada, the US, the UK, Australia and New Zealand, interestingly enough all Anglo-Saxon countries with a fabulous world-famous cuisine. Some gave us mad cows; others inject their cows with growth hormones. Great foods, because as they will tell you, they comply with government regulations, which we all know are pretty much developed under pressure of industry lobbies to maximize producers’ profits, but have the nation’s seal on it to give it this appearance of independence, objectivity and care for the people. The sad thing with this food system model is that in fact it is a failure. This kind of production exists only because it is subsidized to death and that all inputs to produce are also subsidized to death. If you look at what on average taxpayers pay to subsidise a system that cannot survive without help, you would realize that the price of food is not as cheap as it seems, but since it is in the form of taxes, it will not be counted in the relative percentage of the share of food in the total household budget, which industry always present as a reason why they do such a great job for society. Also not included in the price of food is all the externalities, which we could also called collateral damage costs, such as impact of health and health costs (think cardiovascular diseases, some cancers, diabetes and overweight related ailments), which happens when you cut corners on health for profit reasons.

I have spent many years in the food industry and I also know that the truth is in the middle. I have heard the criticism when I was in the system. Things are never as bad as the opponents claim and they are never as good as the industry claims. That said, deliberately transforming butter into something in the direction of margarine (the original kind which consisted of saturating fats) while the early margarine (not very good stuff by then from a fatty acid profile point of view) industry was trashing butter as unhealthy is almost surrealistic. By then, butter had actually a much more positive and healthy fatty acid profile then the early margarines and got blamed. Once the margarine industry realized that their stuff was not that great, they have done nothing else than copying the profile of the “original” butter. And now, we discover that the Canadian butter industry is doing exactly the opposite of what they should be doing from a health perspective. It is amazing how the quest for more profit impairs thinking. The industry is populated with lots of really good and bright people. The knowledge is there and has been for decades. Yet, and just for profit, it is almost all of that is put to sleep or forgotten, and it really always baffles me to see how the industry, time and time over, is giving its opponents sticks to beat them up. Although food is not as cheap as it means, but it seems deceivingly so at the price label point, I believe it would be much better for all of us if it were more expensive but made healthier and more nutritious, because I have noticed that real quality is much more satisfying and that I get more with lesser quantities.

A few interesting things about lipids

Posted on January 30, 2020 by Christophe Pelletier

In the course of the past few decades, fats have gotten a negative reputation. Even though reason seems to make a timid comeback, as carbohydrates have taken over the role of the bogeyman, there still is a stigma on fats. The real culprit is not fat as much as it is overconsumption beyond our actual nutritional and physiological needs of fats, of food, of calories, well… of pretty much everything in our great consumption society. I will not spend time on the overconsumption of fats, as it is mostly a case of gluttony and ignorance about nutrition. I will write the following lines to show why fats are important and contribute to make life fun.

First of all, fats do belong is a healthy balanced diet. Fats, which are part of the lipids as they are called in biology, are building blocks of cell walls of living organisms. Lipids play very important roles in our metabolism and biochemistry. They store calories, which is convenient when food is scarce, but they have many more roles. Cholesterol, a lipid with a terrible reputation, plays an essential role in the synthesis of steroid hormones, which in turn play a role in sexual hormones. Cholesterol also plays a role in the synthesis of vitamin D. Other lipids include mono-, di- and tri-glycerides and fatty acids, and their cohort of saturated, mono-unsaturated and poly-unsaturated types. We all have heard about essential fatty acids, in particular omega-3 type is quite a popular one, and about their importance for good health. Just take the time to do some research on those terms and you will see how important lipids are. It is not particularly difficult, although it can be sometimes tedious, so just take your time to browse information.

Just any other thing in life, too much is exactly that: too much. Excesses always bring problems. It is true for fats. It is also true for the popular protein group. Health and nutrition are about balance and proper amounts.

Butter or margarine? There are some interesting consequences of the fatty acid composition of edible fats. First what is meant by saturated or unsaturated relates to the presence (unsaturated) or absence (saturated) of double bonds in the molecule of a fatty acid. An unsaturated fatty acid molecule has the ability to combine with oxygen or other atoms. When a fat combines with oxygen, it becomes oxidized, which is commonly known as rancid, with the bad taste that goes with it. Saturated fats do not have bonds that can open and combine with other elements. They are more stable. And that was the whole idea of margarine as a substitute for butter. Butter, as you probably know, can get rancid, especially if it is not refrigerated. A way to avoid that is to add ß-carotene, an orange pigment and precursor of vitamin A, to the butter, which is common in the dairy industry. The purpose of margarine was to have a butter substitute that would not get rancid and to do that, the process consists of hydrogenating (adding hydrogen to) the fat. The double bonds open and attach hydrogen atoms, thus leaving no space to oxygen to attach and make the fat rancid. Basically, the original margarine was fully saturated fat. It is ironic to know that when in the same time the margarine industry did all it could to discredit butter, which is a rather complex mix of long and short fatty acids, although mostly saturated. And it is also interesting to see that over time, margarine producers actually produced vegetable fat spreads that mimic butter much more than the original margarine ever would. Since I am addressing the processing of fats, unsaturated fats can turn into two different types called Trans and Cis. We have all heard about the risks of Trans fats and they are banned about everywhere nowadays. Trans and Cis are two spatial molecular configurations of a same fatty acid molecule, depending on which side of the molecule the radical is. This tiny difference has serious implications for metabolism and health, though.

Another characteristic of fatty acids is their physical property. In particular, saturated fats are usually harder at room temperature than mono-unsaturated and even more so than poly-unsaturated, because they have a lower melting point. The more double bonds there are in the fatty acid chain, the softer, even the more liquid the fat/oil is. Also, the longer the chain, the harder the fat is, as their melting point is lower. To sum up and simplify a bit, the softer or more liquid a fat/oil is at room temperature, the healthier it probably is.

Another characteristic of fats is that the fat profile in the food will influence the profile in the body fat. This is important to understand in regard with animal farming. If farm animals eat a diet that contains more unsaturated fats, their body fat will also be more unsaturated. This means that their meat will have a more unsaturated profile, which is a rather positive thing for you as the consumer. Of course, here the rule is always the same: the diet must be balanced.

Animal products and fat is quite an interesting topic, and a rather complex one, too. Fatty meat used to be the preference (think bacon). Why? Simply because I am talking about times when people did not live in overheated houses and had physically demanding jobs. Animal fat was rich in calories, which were quite useful both to do hard work and to live in cool homes. As comfort improved and mechanization made many jobs physically less demanding, the need for these calories decreased. If they are not being burnt, they accumulate in the body. That is why a comfortable life requires fewer calories than a demanding life. Yet, different cultures, because of culinary tradition, deal differently with the fattiness of farm animals destined to produce meat. In the EU, production shifted towards leaner breeds of animals, as consumers did not want fatty meat. In North America, the approach has been a bit different. They like fatty meat but cut off the meat on the plate, or eat quite a bit of it. A disadvantage of producing fat animals is that it requires more energy for their body to produce a pound of fat than it does to produce a pound of muscle. Males (I am talking farm animals here) generally produce leaner meat than females, but castrated males tend to produce a fattier meat than females. Using hormones in animal farming has an effect, too. Since the hormones used are female hormones, animals tend to fatten more. From the producer’s perspective, it is a matter of what the market pays for what quality of meat. In the EU, leaner animals receive a better price, but it is not everywhere the same around the world. Hormones also help reduce the cost as fattening goes faster. Fast is nice, but the age of an animal influences how much fat it gets in its tissues. Just like humans, farm animals have mostly water in their body tissues when they are young. When they age, fat gradually replaces the water, and we all know that losing the love handles gets more difficult with age. It is the same thing with animals. It is complex but fun, isn’t it?

What we have on our plate is all about economics. Depending on what consumers buy, the economic differ, and so do farming systems. Depending on production systems and consumer demand, fattiness of animal products varies. Although most people will tell you that meat is protein, this is far from always true. There different grades of fattiness between regular, lean and extra lean ground meat, for instance. Fat percentages vary greatly, from 10% to 30% of total weight, to simplify. Protein will be around 20% for most meats, regardless of the species. Keep in mind the main ingredient of meat is water. Animal bodies consist of roughly 60% water. If you remove the water and take the dry matter equivalent, fat percentages on dry matter will vary between 25% and 75%, while the number for protein will be around 50%. In the end, meat may contain more fat than protein, sometimes substantially more. Meat and protein are not the same. Just imagine what happens when you deep-fry meat, then!

Does fatty meat taste better? Meat lovers will tell you that they like their meat marbled. Here are a few interesting facts. The flesh of young animals contains more water than older animals, from an intra-species point of view. Of course, there is no point in comparing chickens and cows about this. But within the species, the rule applies, and so does the feeding program. An interesting detail about taste is that aromatic molecules are soluble in fat, but they are not soluble in water. Those aromatic compounds come from the food the animals eat. Therefore a fattier animal will contain more aromatic compounds than a leaner one, all things being equal further. Of course, the kind of feed they eat also contribute greatly. An animal that eats lots of bland feed will not have much of these compounds, even if it is rather fatty. And a less fatty animal that would eat lots of aromatic feed might taste better. When it comes to the marbling, aromatic compounds are not the only thing that plays a role. Marbled meat will keep its juiciness better and will have a softer texture than a lean meat. Lean meat contains relatively more water that will evaporate to some extent during the cooking and as water leaves the meat fibers, the meat might end up a bit stringy, especially if it is cooked through and though.

Related image Do you see now why a Pata Negra pig’s ham tastes so good? It is a pig that is kept in semi-wilderness in Spain and feeds for several years eating chestnuts and other shrubs in a region where vegetation is sparse. It is quite different from a pig that is fed intensively and slaughtered at 6 months of age or so. The price is not the same, either.

So there you have it, fat is good but you must make sure it is good fat and that you eat with moderation. In the end what you have on your plate is a compromise between many contradictory requirements such as taste, quality, cost and price.

Why I can fruit and freeze veggies

Posted on December 5, 2019 by Christophe Pelletier

The story is a bit similar to the one I wrote about deli. It is partly about quality and partly about money.

20191208_092239 It is always great to buy produce at the high of the season. Fruit and veggies are plentiful, so you can get them fresh, ripe and cheap, especially if, like me, you go to the producer directly. Freshness and ripeness are quite important. Only at that stage, produce will contain the highest levels of nutrients. Just like with my story about the deli, it is also important to find a producer that does not pump the veggies with lots of water and fertilizers, because then all you get is a dilution of nutrients and you end up buying more water than you should. Also, the produce tends to spoil faster. Perhaps, the best place I can find the right quality is from my own garden. I water my plants but not with the sole purpose of boosting the growth to get more pounds but to allow the plants to grow harmoniously. I compost all food scraps and that compost goes in my garden. I look for the optimal combination of yield and quality. In my garden, I try to produce more than we can eat in the high season so that I can preserve the surplus, either by freezing, which I do mostly with vegetables, or by canning, which I do mostly with fruit. I suppose that I also could make jams but I do not have much of a sweet tooth. I do make compote of rhubarb, though, which I freeze for later, as my rhubarb produces like crazy in the summer. I hope for you that you have the opportunity to taste produce that you can harvest at the top of ripeness and eat the same day. Nothing beats that. For me the top is with strawberries. The ones from my garden are not particularly big but how fantastic they taste! The stuff I find in stores just does not seem to handle the logistics from producer to store very well and they are loaded with water. I had stopped eating strawberries altogether until I moved here and started my own garden.

I am also lucky to have orchardists as neighbours and I like to buy their fruit especially when they are so ripe that they start to show some little defects that do not sell very well. There is nothing with the taste, on the contrary, but they show some browning and spots, so the orchardist, sells them at a discount. That is when I buy a large quantity of fruit for canning. At first, I thought that canning was complicated but actually it also can be done in the oven, which saves a lot of the problems of dealing with boiling water. I can do 12 cans at a time in my oven, so it goes rather quickly. For all my winter needs, it just takes a couple of days of chaos in the kitchen but it worth the “hassle”. I can enjoy tasty sweet fruit all winter long, until the new season arrives because unfortunately, in the winter, the fruit that I can buy around here is not very tasty. It is expensive and often hardly ripe, or it has ripened artificially, but that does not give the same taste and the same nutrients as naturally ripened fruit. I hardly eat any banana anymore. Yet, I love bananas, but the stuff they sell around here is really sad. The bananas are usually green and they hardly turn yellow as they seem in a hurry to turn all brown and the taste is weird. I remember eating fully ripened bananas in Hawaii and that was something else. Oranges vary a lot in quality and more than half the time, they just taste dull and woolly, so I also gave up on them, except for one brand of heirloom oranges from California. I was a bit suspicious that the heirloom concept might be a bit of a marketing scam but it is not. Those oranges are really great but they are available only for a short period. Grapefruit are usually more constant in quality and that is almost the only fruit that I buy in stores nowadays. Even apples and pears are a bit sad in the winter time.

Veggies I prefer to freeze than canning. I find that they keep more of their crispiness that way but that is my personal preference. From my garden, I freeze green beans, peas, zucchini, parsley and basil mostly. I also freeze the juice of one of the varieties of grapes that I have in my vineyard, as those are just as good as tale grapes. For the rest I make wines, which is also a delicious way of preserving grapes. Those are a treat for the winter time, because just like for fruit, the vegetables that are off season come from further away and have lost some of their freshness. As for my potatoes, onions, shallots and garlic, they do fine in my basement and I can enjoy them all through the winter.

It takes some time, but as I have mentioned earlier, once you have learned how to do it, it does not take all that much time and it is really worth it. It is worth it in terms of quality and taste, but it is also worth it in terms of money because, everything that I preserve for the winter is really cheap when I buy it in the high season, and of course even cheaper when it comes from my garden.

And once again, preserving produce is a great combination of a healthy and nutritious diet; it saves money and reduces the amount of food that is wasted. The triple bottom line wins again!

Why I make my own deli

Posted on December 5, 2019 by Christophe Pelletier

There are several reasons and they all fit in the theme of this website. The main reason, though, has to do with quality. I got tired of buying deli at the supermarket and just after a couple of days, the product would become slimy and sticky, not the good kind of sticky if there is any such thing. Next to being sticky, the deli would also have an unpleasant sour smell. I am sure you know what I mean. Since I do not like to waste any food, I would eat it but there would not be much pleasure. Not everyone has the same sense of self sacrifice, as I have been told in a number of occasions. Who knows how much deli ends up in the landfill for quality reasons? The problem is the way deli is made in an industrial process. The meat is soaked in brine and it contains way too much water, salt and other stuff that have nothing to do in meat, such as nitrite for instance. It is not because pigs are more or less pink that pink should be the natural color of pork deli. The natural color is a dull grey-brown, which is probably not as appealing as pink to ignorant consumers, so they get sold things they should not buy.

The second reason is that such poor quality deli meat is rather expensive. That means the added water, salt, sugar and cheap fat are very well sold. I can make similar deli for at least half the price. It contains nothing weird, but the nicest thing is that it has a much longer life. Even after a week my deli is still dry and it does not smell bad. That what’s great about not adding water: bacteria do not multiply as quickly. So, as you can see, making my own deli save me money, is healthier and eliminates the risk of me throwing away something that I am not sure if it still is safe after a couple of days.

In the meantime, I also have found a pap-and-mom store that makes artisanal deli the old-fashioned way and that has the same qualities of having the natural color, having a long life and that does not taste salty, sugary or watery. That way, I can buy deli types that I do not know how to make, and the other great thing is that their prices are very similar to the industrial deli that supermarkets sell. Their value is way better.

Just anything else cooking, making deli is rather easy and rather quick to make. Of course, like for everything else, there is a learning curve, but it is not rocket science. It is a much better use of anyone’s time than checking every 20 seconds in vain if someone sent you an email or a text message. And nothing beats the taste of home-made hams, patés, rillettes and sausages from pork, chicken, duck or fish!

Rillettes on the left, Pork pâté with hazelnuts, prunes and Armagnac on the right, served with homemade bread

When do you know you have eaten enough?

Posted on March 12, 2019 by Christophe Pelletier

Our bodies are very sophisticated machines. Through biochemistry, metabolism and physiology, they have developed an amazing ability to regulate themselves. For instance, glycaemia level and blood pH are monitored constantly by sensors that in turn send information to organs and trigger them to get into action whenever is needed. Our brains know only one fuel with which they can function: glucose. Any slight deviation in glycaemia or blood pH that lasts too long can lead to brain damage and even death. Brain sensors can tell the body when it is running low on fuel and the message as we know it is to feel hungry. Brain sensors can also tell us when the fuel tank is full and that is the feeling of being “full” or also known as satiety.

To indicate satiety, our body has two information systems. The brain sensors are only one of them. They function on the blood chemical composition, but of course for nutrients to get into the blood stream and have glycaemia and blood pH back to the proper levels, it takes time. The food has to be processed through the stomach and then transit in the intestine where the nutrients are absorbed and enter the blood stream. The other feedback system is not about biochemistry but more of a mechanical one. There is a nervous connection that goes from the stomach to the brain. When the stomach is being filled, the stomach wall stretches and when the stomach has been filled at capacity, the nerve sends a direct and rather immediate message to the brain to let it know that it is full and should no longer receive any more food. The brain read this message as satiety and the feeling of hunger disappears. The combination of these two systems is great but it has a flaw, though, as it had not been prepared for modern eating habits. It is possible that the flaw was never a cause of problems in the past because the diets of then would not act on the flaw (for background read my previous article Lifestyles have changed but our biology has not). So what is the weakness of the satiety feedback? I see two main reasons: calorie density and pace of meals.

When a person eats a high-calorie meal, s/he ingests a high level of calories in every bite. If the person starts with food rich in fat (9 calories per gram), carbs or protein (4 calorie per gram), s/he usually will get them from foods that do not contain too much water, so the calories are not all that diluted. Opposite to this, if the person starts a meal with a salad or a soup, such dishes are rich in water and in fiber, too. Fresh veggies will contain at least 90% water, and so could be soup depending on how much water you put in it of course.

The pace of the meal or, in other words, fast food versus slow food plays a role in the sense of how much time it takes to ingest all the calories. Remember, it takes time for nutrients to be absorbed and enter the blood stream. The slower you eat, the more time you allow that process to happen before ingesting more calories. That way, you do not fill the tank too fast. But if you eat fast, you can ingest more calories that you need before the chemical satiety feedback system reaches you brain. You brain think that you are not full yet, meaning that you have not ingested all the calories you need, while you actually have. If you eat fast but you eat low-calorie density food, it might not be a problem because you still may not have exceeded your calorie intake when the mechanical feedback through the nerve kicks in. On the opposite, if you eat high-calorie density food fast, you can be almost sure that before your stomach can let the brain know that you have eaten enough, you will have ingested too many calories. The reason is simple: high-calorie density foods take less volume than high-density calorie foods. One pound of feathers has a much larger volume than one pound of lead, same idea. Since the stomach-to-brain connection works on the stretching of the stomach, the stomach will allow a higher volume of high-calorie density food to enter before sending its message to the brain, thus allow you to eat more calories than you need to. And if you combine high-calorie density with fast eating, you will get ahead of the biochemical feedback as well. In the category high-calorie density that do not fill the stomach, do not forget to include soft drinks. Just like as indicated in that same previous article, all the calories that you do not burn will be stored as body fat. This explains a lot of why wrong eating/drinking habits can result in overweight and obesity. Although they are not necessarily the only contributors, but they certainly do contribute to the problem.

This leads me to a theory that some people have about why the French who eat their traditional diet of two large meals a day are not particularly fat. The traditional French diet (I would include all the Southern European diet in this, too) consists of long meals, usually at least an hour at the table, and have several courses, as you could see on the school canteen menu in my previous article. The first course is often a salad or a soup, which is low-calorie density. It starts filling and stretching the stomach, but the person does not ingest a lot of calories by then. Then comes the main course. Because the person is already a bit full, s/he does not feel the need for a huge portion, which means that the amount of calories in the main course will not be that high. The meal ends with a dessert, which can have a high-calorie density, but since the person already filled the stomach with the previous two courses, the dessert size is not that big. The calorie density pattern is not the only characteristic of a traditional French meal. The fact that the lunch and dinner take a long time, there is hardly any lag between the food intake and the biochemical satiety feedback. A traditional French meal is actually a very harmonious process between a variety of foods and letting the body carry out its physiology as it is intended to be.

© Christophe Pelletier – The Happy Future Group Consulting Ltd.

Do diets work?

Posted on March 7, 2019 by Christophe Pelletier

There is no shortage of diets available, and lots of nutrition gurus as well. They come and go. Some of them have almost reach superstar status. But do they work? It is not an unreasonable question to ask because the societal problems of overweight, obesity and diabetes do not seem to recede in spite of all sorts of solutions out there.

Although most people think that overweight is the result of an overindulging diet, it might not always be this simple. There can be many causes for excess weight. Of course, eating habits play a role. There are simple reasons that will always be true, such as consuming more calories than a person can burn, an unbalanced diet or lack of sufficient physical activity. But nutrition is only one part of a bigger puzzle. Age, gender or genetics also play a role. To find the proper diet, it is essential to look at both the fuel and the machine. Perhaps the person puts the wrong fuel in the tank, but it could also be that the some parts of the engine are not functioning. Overweight could be the result of some organ(s) not functioning properly. It could be the result of hormonal dysfunction. Hormones are quite tricky and it takes a slight shift in the production of hormone, either too much or too little and many things can go wrong. The body contains many glands that produce hormones that regulate the metabolism: pancreas, thyroid, adrenal gland or hypothalamus to name a few. Environmental factors can also play a role in the malfunction of the metabolism. There could be something in the air, water or food that interferes with the body. There are an amazing number of molecules that end up in or environment and that we “consume” without knowing it, comparable with second hand smoke.

So which diet to choose? Some diets work for some individuals and not for others. Some diets need medical supervision and should not be improvised. It is not because a diet is trendy that it is necessarily the right solution for someone. Beware of hypes, as they can have consequences on body and wallet just as well.

The best is to discuss it with a specialist and I mean a real one. Your favorite TV show hosts may be influential but it does not mean that they always know what they talk about. I hear and read so much nonsense about stuff that I know, I cannot think that it is any different for topics in which I have little or no expertise. Speaking of expertise, realize that having an opinion does not make someone an expert, and everyone has opinions on lots of things. Even experts can be wrong sometimes. For good advice, ask a trusted specialist. After all, it is your body and your health that are at stake. They are too important to treat lightly.

Of course, a number of suggestions will always help, such as watch what you eat, reduce the amount of calories, eat more fruit and vegetables, drink more water, go out for walks and exercise more. These suggestions will not hurt anyone.

The best diet of course is to start eating balanced meals at a young age. The role of parents is critical for taking good eating habits from the start. Failure to do so will result in problems later. Good old-fashioned parenting has worked for ages because it is good old-fashioned common sense. It sounds simple, but as everyone knows it is easier said than done.

How much do people know about nutrition?

Posted on March 6, 2019 by Christophe Pelletier

Here is a simple fun little exercise. Go ask your relatives, friends, neighbours or colleagues basic questions about nutrition. It is an eye opener.

Here is a list of 10 questions. The first one usually gets a reasonable rate of good answers. From there, it tends to go downhill.

How many calories does a person need per day?
How many grams of protein, fats and carbs does a person need per day?
How many calories are there respectively in 1 gram of carbs, 1 gram of fat and 1 gram of protein?
What percentage of the total calories should come from slow carbs, fast carbs, fat and protein?
What are amino acids?
What are essential amino acids, and how many are there?
What are fatty acids?
What are essential fatty acids?
What is glycogen?
What is insulin?

These are fairly basic questions about nutrition and the items listed play essential roles in or physiology and metabolism, and therefore in our health. Do not feel bad if you do not know all the answers because most people are like you. Even people who are involved in the food and agriculture sectors will stumble on those questions. A reason for this is simply that we do not at food as nutrition but we think of food much more in emotional terms than in rational terms. Our eating patterns are determined rather early in our lives and like many other things in life, we do not take a critical look at what we do but we just follow the pattern. Even serious health problems are not always enough to change our eating habits (what? give up bacon? You must be kidding me? -kind of reaction).

Just as an example, a few days ago I found an article from a significant US food company claiming that “children’s palletes are more adventurous nowadays”, referring to their finding that children are more interested in tasting dishes from exotic ethnic recipes. What on Earth has a palette anything to do with food? The proper word is palate. By the way, a palette is a range of colors. It is also the board that artists use to hold and mix paint.

When I read stuff like that, I am a bit worried. Remember my paragraph about the Gourmet impostors in my previous article? Here is a typical example of that, a company that wants to sound sophisticated by trying to use some fancy word that they do not even know.

I have worked many years in the agribusiness and the philosophy still is to push people to consume more of their stuff, not to educate them to build balanced meals unfortunately. My advice is: just learn about nutrition so that you know more than the food producers, and that should not take too long.

Gourmet, Gourmand & Glouton

Posted on March 6, 2019 by Christophe Pelletier

These three French words are important to know and understand, as they show very different relationships with food and interestingly enough also show some more general behavioral pattern outside of food.

Let’s start with the Glouton, or as the French-English dictionary translates into “Greedy Pig”. The translation gives it away already. Here we have the human food vacuum. The Glouton will eat anything as much and as fast as possible. The term pig is actually correct. I have spent a few years of my life in pig production and pigs indeed slurp their food at an amazing speed. Actually, there is not all that much difference between humans and pigs in terms of physiology of digestion and metabolism. I will come back on this in another article in the future. We all know Gloutons. Usually, they cannot cook but feel comfortable throwing meat directly on a flame. They are not quite aware of the existence of cutlery but that does not matter. Using a fork and a spoon would probably just be a waste of time that can be spent better with eating. The same rule applies for sauce. Why spend the time making it yourself, while all it takes is to shake a bottle and prrrt there it skirts on the food! It is entertaining to watch a Glouton in action, for a little while. The Glouton has not interest in reading nutritional labels, plus what would be the point anyway. Gluttony is one of the seven deadly sins and the word itself has the same root as glouton. Gluttony is not just about food and Gloutons usually will treat energy, water, packaging, stuff and all other natural resources in the exact same manner. Education about nutrition won’t interest the Glouton but by some interesting twist of fate, many of the Gloutons seem immune to early death related to excessive food consumption.

The line between Glouton and Gourmand is kind of thin. Both simply eat too much. There are some subtle differences, though. First, while a Glouton will eat anything, the Gourmand tends to specialize in some particular types of food. Often, the food of predilection for a Gourmand has to do with sweetness. Cakes, pastries and cookies are among the favorites. Only for those special categories of food will a Gourmand overindulge. For the other types of food, a Gourmand will eat with much more moderation, and can actually be picky on certain foods. For as much as the Glouton is all about quantity, the Gourmand will go for quantity on the favorite foods, but will have a more balanced approach between quantity and quality for the foods outside the special group. For some mysterious reason, it looks like the Gourmand does not seem to have the same resistance to food-related ailments as the Glouton. A Gourmand needs to be careful and make sure they have a lifestyle that allows burning all those delicious calories.

Last by not least, here is the my favorite of the three. The Gourmet looks for a sensual relationship with foods. The Gourmet is looking for a refined pleasure that goes beyond just a physical satisfaction. If food were a sound, the Gourmet would look for music with structure and personality, for a melody and would definitely resent noise. The pleasure a Gourmet looks for goes far beyond just the digestive tract. A Gourmet is not just a mouth linked to a stomach. A Gourmet enjoys a meal with all his/her senses. A Gourmet is in no rush because pleasure is much more enjoyable when it lasts. A gourmet is not going to have only one dish. That would be boring and frustrating. A proper meal for this group consists of several courses, the one leading to the other in a tantalizing manner. A sauce from a bottle does not belong on their table. The pleasure of cooking the entire dish is too important. Time is not relevant, only a stunning result matters. If quality is paramount, the Gourmet will not settle for too low a quantity, though. The meal has to be sufficiently filling. There are many advantages to this approach of food. Taking the time is important in controlling the amount of calories ingested. The diversity of such meals offers a wide array of nutrients and tend to be rather well-balanced. Like the Glouton and the Gourmand, the Gourmet’s attitude towards food extends beyond food. The same quest for lasting quality pleasure without excess appears in all aspects of life of the Gourmet. A word of caution is necessary though as there are some impostors in the Gourmet world. The aura of sophistication of the Gourmet life is of course attractive but the true Gourmet is not up to impress others. A true Gourmet just enjoys the food and the company. What matters to the Gourmet is the experience and the sharing of it. There is no selfishness in a true Gourmet. This is not the case with the “impostors”. We all know these types. They are to food what a “nouveau rich” is to money and bourgeoisie. They try to make themselves more important and are after recognition. They are the Frasier and Niles Crane among us (sorry for those who are too young to have watched the comedy sitcom show “Frasier”). They know very little about food and wine but pretend they do. After all not everyone can be French or Italian, although not all of them are gourmets.

And to finish, just a quick word about the puritans of food, those righteous souls who have mapped out what is right and wrong in food and agriculture and see evil in about everything different from their food beliefs. Sadly enough, they will live without enjoying the great pleasures of Gourmet meals, as they have chosen to impose on themselves to eat the saddest and dullest foods there are. Perhaps, it is only the Gourmet in me talking, but members of that group always strike me as being the opposite of a jovial “Bon Vivant” (translation would be “someone who lives well”). I do not mind. Everyone is free to choose what is best for them. It would not appear that they live any longer than other people, and they are not immune to diseases, either. Being a gourmet is actually about moderation and responsibility. We just choose to have pleasure in the mix.

Lifestyles have changed but our biology has not

Posted on March 4, 2019 by Christophe Pelletier

By the end of the 19^th century, the Industrial Revolution brought many changes in the relation between humans and nature, and between humans and their nature. The changes continued and amplified after World War II with the rise of the so-called consumption society in developed countries. I say so-called because the economic model is not so much about consumption as it is about buying more goods all the time, while consuming them is secondary. In my opinion, the consumption society should be called the shopping society, as the latter term would describe its purpose more accurately.

The change of economic model has been accompanied with changes of lifestyle, both at home as at work. The level of physical activity has dropped in many jobs and now a lot of workers spend hours daily sitting. With TV and computers, the same trend has happened at home, especially with more and more housing units in urban centers without yards. Even though, many people try to practice some physical activity, there is a sharp contrast with life as it used to be. Nothing is perfect and progress also has its shortcomings.

If our societies have evolved amazingly quickly over the past several decades, our biology has not. Our metabolism, our physiology and our biochemistry are very much the same as they were tens of thousands of years ago, even as before agriculture appeared in human societies. The contrasts with today are many.

By then, food was scarce and humans had to travel long distances and put a lot of physical activity to find something to eat. Today, food is plentiful and all it takes is to sit in your car to drive to the supermarket, which involved little physical exercise, and with online deliveries, the physical activity is even reduced to zero. The former hunter will now turn into a larva.

By then, there would be days without food and if the human organism could survive, it is because it has the ability to store reserves in the body from times of abundance to be used when the hunters and gatherers would come back empty-handed. Today, many people do not even know hunger at all. The easy availability of food exceeds the nutritional needs and what is eaten but not burnt ends up being metabolised into body fat. The old biology does what it is supposed to do, as one of its key roles is to deal with periods of food shortages. In the developed world, people consume on average about twice as many calories, twice as much protein and fats as they actually need. Since that is on average, you can imagine the multiple for some people! The excess portion does not disappear. It is transformed into fat reserves. I like to say that if you eat twice as much as you should, it should not be a surprise to end up twice as big as you should be. Joke aside, it is actually a good thing that animals store food reserves as fat and not as starch as plants do. Reason for that is the calorie density of starch versus fat: 4 calories per gram for starch versus 9 calories per gram of fat. In other words, if you have an excess weight of 10 pounds, it would be 22.5 pounds of starch, so more than twice the burden. Plants do not move, so it is not much of an impediment, but if you need to run away from a predator, an additional 12.5 pounds would make you an even easier prey.

Another difference between modern foods and the old biology is that our bodies have evolved to eat what I would call primary foods; some might want to call them primitive foods even. My point is that our biology is actually rather effective in extracting nutrients from rough foods. A side effect of processing foods is that it makes nutrients more easily accessible, because the processing often breaks physical barriers to the nutrients. As the nutrients are easier to access and our biology is eager to get them, it is only logical that processed foods are metabolised differently and faster than primary foods, thus in fact increasing their nutritional density, which results in more excess nutrients ready to be sent to the fat tissue.

A lot of the issues about the skyrocketing statistics of obesity, overweight, diabetes, cardiovascular diseases and other food-related ailments find their origin in the fact that our lifestyles have changed while our biology has not. Food availability has changed. Foods have changed. Agricultural methods have changed. Economic models have changed. Diets have changed. Level of physical activity has changed. They all contribute to an imbalance between consumption and needs, which results to food-related problems. This is why, it is more important than ever to make education about food, agriculture and nutrition mandatory in schools. If we consider that education is the basis for better lives, then there is no argument why these topics should not be life basics for all children and adults alike!

Also considering the cost of health issues related to food, I bet you that education about food, agriculture and nutrition would pay off for individuals, insurance companies and governments alike.

Cooking is an act of love

Posted on March 3, 2019 by Christophe Pelletier

Often, I get the feeling that a lot of people resent cooking. Personally, I love it.

Cooking is not very difficult. There are plenty of recipes that can be done successfully by about anyone. Like everything else, there is a bit of a learning curve but it does not need to take long to be able to prepare decent meals without much effort.

Cooking does not take as much time as many people believe. Within 30 to 45 minutes, anyone can make a great dinner and I mean a great dinner. The trick is mostly about using time efficiently by getting started and preparing some parts of the meal while others are already cooking. Are those 30 to 45 minutes really that horrible? I think not. Just think about how much time it takes to go out for dinner and back, especially if you take into account waiting times and travel. Are 30 to 45 minutes watching lousy TV programs or spending that time on so-called social media giving away your personal information to third parties that do not care for you? Just do the math and compare. Then, you will see that cooking at home actually saves you time and provides you with a better quality of life than passively staring at a screen.

A great advantage of cooking is that you know what you put in the food, well that is if you cook from scratch. When it comes to what is in your food, there is a rather simple truth: the one preparing the meal decides what is on your plate. You will be the one in charge if you cook. If you buy your food already prepared, clearly it is someone else who will have decided for you and you will have no control, and they might not have your best interest at heart, either. When it comes to food preparation, the secret ingredient for great food is love. That is why grandma’s meals tasted so good. These meals were not prepared by a machine or a stranger, but by someone who wanted to make you happy. That is the difference.

Cooking is an act of love. It is something you do for your loved ones and when you cook you want to give a smile on their faces. Of course, like all things love, it is not a given and it requires some work, but it is fun work. The more love you put in the food, the tastier they find it. Also, if you put much or any love in the food, they will notice, too. Cooking is not about gender. Men can cook. I do and you should ask my wife and all the guests that I have invited home what they think. Cooking does not make men impotent and neither does it influence their sexuality. Only morons spread that kind of nonsense.

Another advantage of cooking is that it saves you a lot of money. With the kind of food I cook (see my gallery), I come down to about making meals 10% of what I would be charged in a restaurant, and I do not even include taxes and tip in this calculation. At the end of the year and depending on how large your family is and how often you choose to cook instead of eating out, you can save thousands of dollars that can go to your mortgage instead of for other more useful purposes. Here is a simple calculation: if cooking your own meals saves you $50 per week compared with eating out, and you do that 50 weeks a year, the total savings will be $50 x 50 = $2,500 per year!

Cooking your own meals increases your financial security level. That is worth a little work.

The Sensible Gourmet

Healthy Body and Wallet with Gourmet Food

Category Archives: Health